YouTube's mobile site still works, and users can still watch through Safari.

If you were one of the remaining loyal users of YouTube's dedicated app on iOS, you're in for a disappointment once iOS 6 is released this fall. Apple confirmed it is dropping the default app from its list, though iOS users will be able to continue watching and interacting with YouTube in other ways.

Developers first began discovering the absence of the native YouTube app after Apple released an update to the iOS 6 beta on Monday afternoon. It wasn't immediately clear why YouTube wasn't included as part of iOS 6 Beta 4, but Apple later issued a statement to the Verge confirming its intent.

"Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store," the company said.

Indeed, many YouTube aficionados had already begun using YouTube's new and improved mobile site over the default app—which, like Apple's other default apps, you cannot delete from your device. The major downside of doing this—at least up until iOS 6 Beta 4 was released today—was that links to videos that you might click from the Web would still open in the default app whether you wanted them to or not. But once iOS 6 is released to the public, it seems as if YouTube's native app will be gone for good, eliminating this slight annoyance. Users will also be able to continue watching YouTube videos from within Mobile Safari, though we're left wondering whether Apple's Camera app will continue to offer an option to upload your phone's videos to YouTube once iOS 6 is out.

Promoted Comments

I think it's safe to take this as a sign that Apple is about to come out with its own YouTube competitor, but does want competition on its platform and once iOS 7 comes out, you will not be able to use YouTube at all, possibly not even in a browser.

Actually I think this would be one of the most stupid moves I could imagine for Apple. YouTube is one of the most appreciated sites of the internet and blocking your users from accessing a site like YouTube would be a serious shot in the knee. I personally don't care for YouTube, but I guess it is a major use case for most iOS - devices to browse YouTube videos during a commute (iPhone) or on the couch (iPad). Actually I cannot even imagine any move that would drive bigger hordes of iOS users in the arms of Android.

I cannot imagine Apple doing a move like this, even if they go full "thermonuclear war" at Google.

Even with what they are doing now with getting rid of the native app I think they are taking a risk. If this is not being communicated well by Apple to make it crystal clear for everyone that YouTube is still going to work on every iDevice, it might scare some people away. You all know the internet gossip machines and if a message of "YouTube is banned from iOS" is being transported this might very well do some significant damage.

6 posts | registered Apr 24, 2012

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

Good user experience is not needing to change default preferences. Changing default preferences is a fallback, not a primary use case.

Dreadful user experience is not allowing any change of the default preferences. In this instance, there is no fallback.

Not at all.

Click on a link, YouTube.app loads, video plays. That's not dreadful at all.

Actually, reading the conversation, the "default preference" that ppl talk about seem to be with sharing or uploading YouTube videos, not with viewing them. For example, from the YouTube app, can you share it to Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn using whatever specific app you want? Can you send that link to your favorite Email or messaging app? Or are you limited only to the social networks and other communications that Apple deemed you worthy to share in, using only the exact techniques that they decided you should?

Good user experience is not needing to change default preferences. Changing default preferences is a fallback, not a primary use case.

Yeah, but having only a fixed set of services to share to with no way to add or remove services is not a good user experience to begin with. It makes you a helpless consumer for the services Apple happens to have some business deal with. It basically makes you into a working fluid for such deals. What if I don't want to share to YouTube, Twitter and Facebook but to Vimeo and Tumbler?

Good user experience is not needing to change default preferences. Changing default preferences is a fallback, not a primary use case.

Dreadful user experience is not allowing any change of the default preferences. In this instance, there is no fallback.

You can set the Youtube app to restricted in the parental controls, then when clicking a youtube link, the app doesn't load, and the web interface does. It's less obvious than a preference setting, but it's doable.

I would venture to say that No One uses the exact same settings/preferences on almost anything.

You would be wrong. Jared Spool, who's pretty much the king of the hill when it comes to user experience work, did some research on this last year. What they found was that more than 95% of the people surveyed had kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program installed in. Of the people that did change their settings, the vast majority was programmers and designers, aka Ars readers.

Cool, now a host of new customers can join fellow Youtube Mobile users in wondering why the hell Google doesn't provide the ability to share a non-mobile link to a video from the site without first sharing the link in an email, and copying the link from that.

I would venture to say that No One uses the exact same settings/preferences on almost anything.

You would be wrong. Jared Spool, who's pretty much the king of the hill when it comes to user experience work, did some research on this last year. What they found was that more than 95% of the people surveyed had kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program installed in. Of the people that did change their settings, the vast majority was programmers and designers, aka Ars readers.

The lesson? We might rage about not getting options, but the average user doesn't care.

These studies aren't comprehensive, I believe.Changing defaults has been the biggest complaint my family of nontech users has mentioned.Not youtube, rather, the default browser.

There is no way to change link default to anything other than safari.

Default handling is a big miss.

Actually, the real lesson is not "We might rage about not getting options, but the average user doesn't care."

The real lesson is "Choose your defaults really carefully, because it's all most people will ever see." If your defaults annoy people, it barely matters whether users can override them or not. If your defaults are really well thought out, the vast majority of your user base will be happy whether or not you can change them.

As far as the browser goes, my guess is that what Apple really would want to solve is to eliminate the reasons normal users want to switch from Safari. If it's because Safari isn't good enough, they should make Safari better. If it's because, say, Chrome integrates better from the desktop browser to the mobile browser, then they'll want to address it by ramming Safari down your throat so hard that if Chrome users want to be integrated with mobile devices, Google will damn well bend over backwards to make their tools integrate even better with Safari than they do with Chrome Mobile. Because Apple doesn't play the interop game themselves unless the future of the company is at stake.

The Android method of selecting a default app is pretty good, really. If you have multiple browsers or office apps installed, it will ask you to pick one when you click on a link/file. When you have decided which one you prefer, you can make it default. It's nice because so long as you don't mind the intermediate popup for a while, it's easy to evaluate your options. The major ding on Apple is you don't get any options for that, nor can you customize your menu options. I'd love to use my full-screen browser by default on my iPhone, and I wish I could add UbuntuOne to my photo gallery options for easy uploads.

You may not feel you "need" such options until you find them on an Android phone, then you realize how silly such lack of simple customization is. If Apple feels they need to protect the user from themselves, just bury the options in settings. Those with no complaints will never know the difference.

Now they just need to get rid of all the other useless apps that I really don't want clogging up my phone. Why can't I remove compass? And why does Clock have to be grouped with the rest of the, usless what does it call it... utilities. I need Clock for my Alarms, I really don't care about a compass. Or Newstand. Or Notes. Or Videos (Why the hell isn't this part of photos yet?) And Maps once it changes too... Why can't I remove these apps. Make them available in Settings if I change my mind. Or something. That'd be nice.

Oh, but wait, Andriod already does that logical thing I just mentioned. Better not copy them, they may accuse you of things too. /sarcasm

I would venture to say that No One uses the exact same settings/preferences on almost anything.

You would be wrong. Jared Spool, who's pretty much the king of the hill when it comes to user experience work, did some research on this last year. What they found was that more than 95% of the people surveyed had kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program installed in. Of the people that did change their settings, the vast majority was programmers and designers, aka Ars readers.

I think it's safe to take this as a sign that Apple is about to come out with its own YouTube competitor, but does want competition on its platform and once iOS 7 comes out, you will not be able to use YouTube at all, possibly not even in a browser.

Actually I think this would be one of the most stupid moves I could imagine for Apple. YouTube is one of the most appreciated sites of the internet and blocking your users from accessing a site like YouTube would be a serious shot in the knee. I personally don't care for YouTube, but I guess it is a major use case for most iOS - devices to browse YouTube videos during a commute (iPhone) or on the couch (iPad). Actually I cannot even imagine any move that would drive bigger hordes of iOS users in the arms of Android.

I cannot imagine Apple doing a move like this, even if they go full "thermonuclear war" at Google.

Even with what they are doing now with getting rid of the native app I think they are taking a risk. If this is not being communicated well by Apple to make it crystal clear for everyone that YouTube is still going to work on every iDevice, it might scare some people away. You all know the internet gossip machines and if a message of "YouTube is banned from iOS" is being transported this might very well do some significant damage.

Get a Google Android phone and you can solve all of your squealing by having Google and its parasitic services all up your A__. I for one hope Apple cuts out all of Google's revenue on iOS, maps down, you(boob)tube down, and next up search good riddance!

I would venture to say that No One uses the exact same settings/preferences on almost anything.

You would be wrong. Jared Spool, who's pretty much the king of the hill when it comes to user experience work, did some research on this last year. What they found was that more than 95% of the people surveyed had kept the settings in the exact configuration that the program installed in. Of the people that did change their settings, the vast majority was programmers and designers, aka Ars readers.

The lesson? We might rage about not getting options, but the average user doesn't care.

The article doesn't describe the users as not caring. In the only instance they explored, some of the users made an assumption about the developer's motives. There's inadequate information to conclude that users liked the default settings, felt they were appropriate for their purposes, couldn't figure out how to change the settings, or were using a program (as we're discussing here) that had no way to change settings.

]If you were one of the remaining loyal users of YouTube's dedicated app on iOS,

how did you determine the number of "remaining" users of the YouTube app?

She didn't. She used a similar line ('one of the three remaining users') in her recent Hulu article as well, even after a commenter kindly provided actual information showing that Hulu revenue and subscriptions were growing. I'm not sure why though.

I think it's safe to take this as a sign that Apple is about to come out with its own YouTube competitor, but does want competition on its platform and once iOS 7 comes out, you will not be able to use YouTube at all, possibly not even in a browser.

Actually I think this would be one of the most stupid moves I could imagine for Apple. YouTube is one of the most appreciated sites of the internet and blocking your users from accessing a site like YouTube would be a serious shot in the knee. I personally don't care for YouTube, but I guess it is a major use case for most iOS - devices to browse YouTube videos during a commute (iPhone) or on the couch (iPad). Actually I cannot even imagine any move that would drive bigger hordes of iOS users in the arms of Android.

I cannot imagine Apple doing a move like this, even if they go full "thermonuclear war" at Google.

Even with what they are doing now with getting rid of the native app I think they are taking a risk. If this is not being communicated well by Apple to make it crystal clear for everyone that YouTube is still going to work on every iDevice, it might scare some people away. You all know the internet gossip machines and if a message of "YouTube is banned from iOS" is being transported this might very well do some significant damage.

I agree, it will anger a lot of YouTube users, but I wouldn't put it past Apple to try to put out a competing service to YouTube or block Google from iOS all together. And if Apple does do that, I would not be surprised if the FTC puts Apple under the microscope, even with iOS being a "closed" platform. I'm sure the FTC will want to know why a developer that was featured built into the system is being blocked.